


I've got the same deep wounds as you (my love can double as a weapon too)

by annabeth_writes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Future Fic, Jon has hit rock bottom, Mild Language, Sansa isn't going to let him stay there, a blend of book and show, at odds, everyone else just wants to stay out of their way, whether he likes it or not, with lots of anger and sexual tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27196936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth_writes/pseuds/annabeth_writes
Summary: “A deserter of the Night’s Watch has been captured near the wolfswood,” Maester Wolkan said, his voice grave.“It’s him, isn’t it?”
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 21
Kudos: 144





	I've got the same deep wounds as you (my love can double as a weapon too)

**Author's Note:**

> This is both canon divergent and a future canon fic all at once. It basically takes the end of the show and fits it into the books in a way that doesn't make me want to scream entirely. Some characters will be alive that are dead on the show. You'll figure it out as we go. Eventually, you'll probably realize that I have no idea what I'm doing because this basically going to be a self-indulgent sexual tension fic that'll eventually lead to these two idiots banging it out. So let's have some fun!
> 
> Title: Heaven or Hell by Digital Daggers

The Queen in the North rarely smiled. It was not a fact that bothered her subjects. Rather the opposite, as the northern people were as fiercely protective of their queen as she was of them. They knew so few of the hardships that she had endured, but it was enough. No one could doubt the adoration that the North had for Sansa Stark but if anyone had reason to question her love for her lands and people, all they had to do was watch. For though her face seemed made of stone, every once in a while her love for the North would shine through.

This was one of those times.

She stood where her father and mother often did when they were Lord and Lady of Winterfell. Her gloved hands clasped before her and her brilliant gaze taking in the courtyard below. Tracking the quick movements of servants and other inhabitants of the castle. Her eyes shining at the sights and sounds of a flourishing castle. Her lips quirking at the ring of steel and shouts of boys and girls learning to fight within the training yard, due to her capable master-at-arms. Winterfell was  _ alive _ and she could not resist taking time each day to celebrate that, even if her merriment seemed subdued to the outside eye.

“Your Grace.”

Tension seized her body at the wary sound of her maester’s voice. Such a tone could never bring good tidings and as she turned to face him, Sansa saw that Maester Wolkan looked almost miserable as he drew near to her. His chains clinked together as he bent at the waist in a low bow. Her shrewd gaze flitted over him, seeing no scroll in his hand. No ill news from the south then. Yet she did not dare to breathe, waiting for him to speak as she gestured with her hand for him to rise.

“A deserter of the Night’s Watch has been captured near the wolfswood,” Maester Wolkan said, his voice grave.

Sansa stared at him for a long moment, her heart stuttering in her chest and her breaths coming at a more rapid pace. Turning away, she lifted her gloved hands to clutch at the railing of the covered bridge and inhaled deeply, letting her eyes fall closed.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked after taking a moment to steady her voice.

She would not let him hear her speak shakily. Maester Wolkan had seen her at her worst, without a doubt, but Sansa hadn’t been a queen then. A queen couldn’t afford to be seen as weak. Even a queen so loved as the one in the North.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

She forced herself not to shudder at the affirmation of her worst fear. They would not see her cry. Not even as her throat burned and her heart ached viciously.

“Very well,” Sansa said, opening her eyes and lifting her chin. “Have him brought to the Great Hall so that we may settle the matter.”

“With the household present, Your Grace?”

Sansa’s eyes flitted down to the training yard, where her sister was taking the castle’s children through exercises with wooden swords, her own Needle clutched in her hand. Arya would not speak out. Not publicly, at least. Still, it would make it all the more difficult to see her sister glaring from the shadows as she faced this deserter. Yet a statement had to be made. This decision, as much as any other she faced, would define her as queen. Sansa knew that people would need to see so that they could know her mind.

“Yes,” she finally said, turning to make her way inside the Great Keep. “Anyone who wishes to come may do so.”

As she ducked into the warmth of the castle, stripping away her gloves and handing them off to her lady’s maid, Alessa, Sansa remembered Maester Luwin’s words from so long ago.

_ “Oathbreaking is a most serious offense and must be met with a most severe punishment. Otherwise, there will be little reason for others not to do the same.” _

Severe. Did Sansa have it in her to be such a ruler? Hadn’t she given others a choice? All the thieves, rapers, and murderers that were brought forth to receive justice? But a deserter… they did not earn the mercy of a choice. They had shown that they would abandon the Wall once and therefore could not be trusted to remain if sent back again. So they had no choice. A most severe punishment. Death. Was that the most severe punishment that she could offer? Would it have any effect at all?

What was death to a man who had already defeated it?

*****

A hush fell over the Great Hall as the doors opened to admit the deserter. He bore no chains and looked remarkably unruffled, though his hair, beard, and clothing left him looking like a wildling. Some of the northern lords that were present gave him suspicious glances for it but the rest stared at him in a mix of awe and fear. Awe for the king that he had once been. Fear for the fate that he may well suffer before the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Looking out over them all, their stone-faced queen sat upon the high seat of the Starks, her midnight blue skirts draped just so, her hair pinned away from her face, and her hands folded demurely in her lap.

And upon her fire-kissed head sat a crown of iron swords.

The deserter did not look up as he came to a stop in the middle of the hall. His head remained bowed to the floor, his hands clenched at his sides and his chest rising and falling beneath the blend of furs that he wore in various shades of brown, yet another sign of his broken oath. For a single tense moment, every mind in the Great Hall wondered if he would refuse to bow as those north of the Wall did. Had he spent so much time with the free folk that he would show the Queen in the North such disrespect? Did he care so little for the blood they shared?

But he silenced their concerns as he lowered himself into a bow far deeper than any that he gave to the Dragon Queen. That was little comfort to all those who remembered that he gave the North to Daenerys Targaryen too. They would not forget.  _ Could not _ forget. But they also would not forget the man who rose to fight against the Bolton army and helped take back Winterfell. Who defended them all against the dead with the courage of a thousand men. With the smallest flick of her eyes, the queen looked to the Commander of her Queensguard, her most faithful shield, and gave a brief nod without speaking.

“You may rise,” Ser Brienne of Tarth said in a commanding tone, her hand ever resting on the pommel of her sword when she was in service to Sansa Stark.

Though he straightened from his bow, the deserter still did not look up from the stone floor. To Sansa’s eyes, he had never looked more like the sulking boy that brooded at the other end of the hall during the feasts of their childhood. His brow furrowed and his mouth downturned, an air about him that screamed of a boy that knew he didn’t belong there, though he wished more than anything that he did. Refusing to let such memories soften her expression, she took a deep breath and lifted her chin before nodding at one of the guards that escorted him in to come forth and speak.

“Your Grace,” he said with a bow. “We caught this deserter of the Night’s Watch at the border of the wolfswood.”

“Was he following the Kingsroad?” Lord Cerwyn rose to ask.

“No, m’lord,” the other guard said with a shake of his head. “He seemed to be headed for the castle gates.”

Confusion passed over many faces but the queen remained impassive even as her eyes lit up with a spark of anger that few could see.

“There is only one fate for a deserter of the Night’s Watch,” the Greatjon all but roared, as was usual for the large, boisterous man.

Murmurs of agreement rose up and none saw the way that Arya Stark’s hand closed around that thin little sword at her waist.

“King Bran of the Six Kingdoms decreed that Jon Snow be banished to the Wall,” another lord spoke up.

“At the behest of that Lannister shit he took as Hand,” another scoffed.

“Jon Snow was raised in this very castle.”

“Dragonspawn,” a lord said, spitting on the floor.

“He was born of the North. Let the Queen of the North decide his fate.”

“He is a deserter of the Night’s Watch and a traitor to the North! Let him bleed!”

The clamor grew louder and louder and still, the man in the center of it all did not flinch. He did nothing at all. He simply stood there with a bowed head and clenched hands, awaiting his fate in silence. As if none of it mattered in the least to him. As if he only waited for it to end. He could have escaped notice. He could have gone off to faraway lands without anyone the wiser. Yet he was here, right where he meant to be. Through it all, eyes from every direction flitted to the queen, seeking her thoughts.

She did not speak a word and her piercing eyes refused to look away from the man that stood before her. Even as the lords and ladies of the North tried their best to be heard over one another, still she stared, looking almost bored as her fingernail picked at a divot in the stone of her seat. As if she knew her thoughts long before sweeping into the Great Hall and sat upon the high seat of her father and all those who came before him. As she finally rose to her feet, a heavy silence fell and every eye settled upon her now. The crown did not slip and her hands did not tremble as she clasped them before her.

“No.”

As the single word resonated through the hall, those grey eyes finally lifted from the floor and met hers, shock and fury mingling in their depths. She stared back, unmoved by all that she saw. There was no triumph in her face. No trace of smugness in how she held herself. The queen was unbeaten by her foes and uplifted by her people. She had played the game many times over and she had won. To think that he might have outmaneuvered her was nearly laughable, though she showed no mirth as he realized that he had lost yet again.

None dared to speak against her as she stepped down from the seat gracefully, her slender hands clasped in her skirts. All those around him shifted and muttered to one another, their eyes moving from her to Jon Snow and back as they came to terms with whatever just took place. Her low murmurs, spoken to Winterfell’s steward and several northern guardsmen, didn’t carry far enough for anyone to hear. As she swept from the room with Ser Brienne at her back, she did not spare him another look. He wished that he could find his voice to shout after her, but it seemed that she had stolen his words along with his death.

“The queen has commanded that your chambers be readied for you, Your Grace,” the steward said, falling back into old habits as he approached Jon.

His mouth twisted into a frown, his eyes growing darker and his brow furrowing into a scowl.

“I’m no king,” Jon Snow finally spoke, having half a mind to refuse the chambers and demand a cell.

The steward looked as if he did not know what to say, so he simply nodded to the guards who surrounded Jon, making it quite clear that he had little choice. Cursing Sansa Stark in the darkest recesses of his mind, he let them lead him away without further protest.

*****

“You were never going to execute him.”

Though Sansa was used to Arya’s quiet manner, she could not help the breath that seized in her throat at the sudden sound of her voice in her otherwise empty chambers. With a roll of her eyes, she lifted the crown from her head and set it upon her vanity.

“Perhaps I considered it,” she said, slipping the rings from her fingers and unclasping a silver chain necklace from which dangled a single sapphire teardrop.

Arya scoffed, throwing herself down onto Sansa’s bed without so much as removing her boots. At her sister’s cutting look of admonishment, she kicked them off and let them fall to the floor with two distinct thumps.

“They won’t like it later,” Arya said, looking on as Sansa pulled the pins from her hair one at a time. “All the lords.”

Sansa hummed in agreement, crossing to sit on the bed next to Arya, pulling her hair over her shoulder in a wordless request. As long as she was there, her sister could make herself useful so that she wouldn’t have to call on her lady’s maid to assist.

“They may just try to depose me,” Sansa said, her lips quirking into a small smile at the thought.

With a snort, Arya picked apart the knot at the base of her spine and began pulling the laces through the eyelets on either side of the dress.

“Only if they want to go through Brienne,” the younger Stark sister said, baring her teeth in a grin.

She almost wanted to see those pricks try to remove Sansa from her throne over this. Over Jon. It wouldn’t go well for them. Rising to her feet once her dress was loose enough, Sansa pushed it from her hips and let it fall to the floor before carefully shaking it out and laying it over a nearby chair.

“I’ll show Bran’s scroll to my council once I put my name to it,” Sansa said, sitting before her vanity to brush out her hair.

“Guess we finally know what that’s about,” Arya muttered, shaking her head at the antics of their mysterious younger brother, who very rarely resembled their brother.

Then she grew quiet, fiddling with a tear in the sleeve of her shirt. Sansa picked up on her sudden mood change and glanced over her shoulder questioningly.

“You know why he did it,” Arya finally said quietly. “Why he came here. You realized in the hall.”

Sansa pressed her lips together, turning around so that Arya wouldn’t see the emotions flit across her face. Anger and panic and dreadful anguish. Yes, she knew.

“He wants to die,” her sister said shakily as if she could scarcely believe the words she spoke.

Sansa knew that she could not sit there to wallow in her own aching heart when Arya had yet to even wrap her mind around Jon’s intentions. Dropping her brush to the vanity surface with a clatter, she rose to her feet and crossed back over to the bed. Sitting next to Arya once more, Sansa reached out to take her hand and squeezed it lightly.

“I cannot speak to his state of mind,” she said quietly, her voice weighted with such burdens. “But he will be safe here. You have my word.”

Arya nodded, though the troubled look in her eyes did not fade.

*****

He marked the days with the rising and setting of the sun, having little else to do in the chambers that served as his cell. In truth, he should have expected that Sansa would outwit him at every turn. She was no fool. Even if the rest of the North could not see why he had abandoned the Wall and come straight for Winterfell, Sansa saw right through him. Perhaps even to his very soul. Jon thought to be long dead by now. This was not his only plan. If Sansa decided to pardon him, though it would be a mistake, Jon knew that there were other ways. Yet here he sat after nine days of near solitude, staring down at the most recent food tray that Brienne delivered herself, as she did all the others.

There was something different.

A folded piece of parchment tucked beneath the edge of the plate. There was nothing outwardly special about it to his eyes, yet he found himself unwilling to touch it all the same. Somehow, Jon knew that whatever was written upon the page would bring news that he did not want to read. He had seen no sign of Sansa since the gathering in the Great Hall where she refused to grant him the peace that came with death. In all those months beyond the Wall, Jon had himself quite convinced that she would show little hesitation. That she must have hated him for his part in all that happened, even if she did not say it.

Though there was every chance that she  _ did  _ hate him and simply thought it better to force him to suffer than to give him a clean death.

As he slowly pulled the folded parchment out from beneath the plate, Jon felt Brienne’s eyes on him and wondered why she hadn’t left him yet. The knight had very little to say to him over the last near fortnight. No matter what questions he asked, they went unanswered. When Jon demanded to know whether the queen would keep him there forever, his cousin’s sworn shield simply regarded him with a cool gaze before walking out, her Queensguard cloak dyed grey with a white wolf embroidered upon the very center of it. Seeing that same cloak from the corner of his eye now, Jon fought the urge to snap at her and slowly unfolded the parchment.

_ I, Brandon of Houses Stark and Tully, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, Lord of the Six Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm, do hereby pardon Jon Snow of Houses Targaryen and Stark for the crime of queenslaying. I concurrently withdraw the sentence of banishment to the Wall and dismiss any oaths made to the brotherhood of the Night’s Watch. _

_ I, Sansa of Houses Stark and Tully, the First of Her Name and Queen in the North, do hereby endorse the pardon of Jon Snow of Houses Targaryen and Stark for the crime of queenslaying. I concurrently endorse the withdrawal of the sentence of banishment to the Wall and the dismissal of any oaths made to the brotherhood of the Night’s Watch. _

Jon barely read to the end before the parchment was crumpled in his fist. He stared into the flames that crackled within his hearth, trying and failing to control his rapidly beating heart and the heavy rise and fall of his chest. He felt as if he could burn to ashes right then and there, with how hot his blood boiled. Clenching his jaw, he felt raw. He felt betrayed. He felt furious. Most of all, he felt  _ hated _ .

“Queen Sansa would like me to inform you that your door is henceforth unguarded,” Brienne said, a note of wary concern in her voice as she watched him closely. “You are free to go where you wish.”

He wondered if that was meant to soften him towards her. If such a small privilege would ease the burden that came with this unwanted pardon. Jon did not want to be free. He wanted to die.

“Where is the queen now?” he asked, doing his level best to keep his voice calm.

Brienne did not answer for several long moments until his dark eyes flashed in her direction. Heaving out a sigh, she lifted her hand to the pommel of her sword and gave him a look filled with warning.

“In a meeting of the small council, though I might suggest—”

Jon did not care to hear whatever she had to say. Her words cut away with the scrape of his chair over the floor. Leaving the food untouched, he stalked for the door of his chamber and wrenched it open, caring very little for the loud crash of it hitting the stone wall. He could not say whether he came across anyone else in his furious march across the Great Keep. If he did, they likely dove out of the way at the sight of the rage written across his face. Jon knew that Brienne would be right on his heels and perhaps she would even bar the way to the council chamber, but he would still be heard even if he had to shout for all the castle to hear until Sansa permitted him within.

To his surprise, Brienne made no move to stop him as he burst through the door of the council chamber with little care for the gasps and shouts that arose within. Sansa’s hand rose halfway to her chest, likely to press over a racing heart, yet she stilled at the sight of him and gave him a wide-eyed stare. Jon saw little else but her in the haze that had taken over his mind, heaving out sharp breaths as he stepped further into the room, holding his hand up to show the pardon that was still crushed in his grip.

“You have some nerve, Lord Snow _ , _ ” Galbart Glover spat, rising to his feet. “Barging in on your queen and her council, looking no better than a wildling.”

Jon barely heard a word of it, watching as Sansa’s surprised gaze gave way to the stone-like expression that he saw that day in the Great Hall. Another man called for the guards but she held up her hand, shaking her head.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“ _ This _ isn’t necessary,” Jon hissed, drawing nearer to her just as he saw several hands go to their swords. “Do you think that you have won now that you have me backed into a corner?”

Sansa gave those around her a severe look, making it clear what she would think of anyone drawing steel against him.

“I didn’t want this.”

Sansa tilted her head and merely blinked at him, folding her hands atop the table as if she sought to drive him mad with her poised exterior. It may well work, for all the anger that stewed within him.

“Most men would be glad for a pardon,” she said, her voice quiet and unassuming. “Why is that you are not, cousin?”

Jon gave her no answer, stalking around the table to throw the piece of parchment into the hearth. Watching the words burn away gave him less satisfaction than he’d hoped. When he turned, Sansa’s eyes betrayed her disappointment.

“That copy was for you, my lord,” she said, almost sounding exasperated by him. “Of course there is one in my desk and another in King Bran’s possession. Your pardon is also recorded in the maester’s record at the Citadel. A bit of flame will not undo what has already been decided.”

Any triumph at the act faded at her unaffected words.

“I’m not a lord.”

“As a matter of fact, you are. My council has only just agreed that you shall be named the Lord of Torrhen’s Square, since House Tallhart has been declared extinct due to the actions of House Bolton.”

Jon simply stared at her, unable to quite believe what he was hearing. The council around her looked less than thrilled as if their agreement had been more or less a surrender. Jon had no doubt that Sansa worded the decree as a request but made it quite clear with her eyes alone that it was a command. Was there a line she would not cross? Any lengths to which she would not go? Was all of this to protect him or to punish him? Were they one and the same, in her eyes? Did she have the same look upon her face when she proclaimed the truth of his birth to Tyrion Lannister? Was she so unmoved while she tore his world to pieces?

“Oh, there is something else that I wish to make known,” Sansa said, pausing in the midst of gathering the papers that were spread out before her. “I hereby appoint Lord Jon Snow of Torrhen’s Square as Hand of the Queen.”

The lords and ladies seated at the table grew still, shocked into silence once more as their queen rose from her seat with the slightest of smiles on her lips, her wintry gaze fixing upon him. Jon could see her thoughts in her eyes as plainly as if she spoke them aloud.

_ Now I have won. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear what you think!


End file.
